Monthly Archives: September 2012

In System Preferences, there’s a setting that lets you have your Mac automatically open an app every time you login. It can even automatically open folders or documents. Just go to System Preferences, then click Users (or Users & Groups), then click the Login Items tab.

You’ll see a list of items set to automatically open whenever you login. Beneath that list are plus and minus buttons that let you add or remove items from that list.

If you’re having a problem with something automatically opening every time you login, chances are excellent that it’s in that list.

Still, there are some apps that automatically open even though they’re not in your Login Items list. If you run into one of these apps, and want to stop it from auto-launching, the first thing to do is to check that app’s preferences. There’s probably a checkbox to turn automatic launching on or off.

If you can’t find a preference setting, there are three five other places to look:

/System/Library/StartupItems

/Library/StartupItems

/Library/LaunchDaemons

/Library/LaunchAgents

~/Library/LaunchAgents

In theory, there’s a fourth place: /System/Library/LaunchDaemons. But that folder is reserved for parts of the OS X operating system, and you shouldn’t find any 3rd-party apps in that folder.

Share this:

Like this:

In the weeks following the Apple v. Samsung verdict, I’ve seen many blog posts and comments claiming that Apple is fighting their competitors in the courts instead of competing through innovation.

A moments thought demonstrates the silliness of that argument.

Apple earned their arsenal of patents through innovation. Without innovative inventions, they wouldn’t have earned the patents. But innovations only provide a competitive edge if your competitors don’t have access to them.

So competing through innovation requires both patenting inventions and preventing competitors from infringing those patents.

If Apple didn’t innovate, they wouldn’t have the patents, and there wouldn’t be any lawsuits. Likewise, if Apple competitors like Samsung relied on innovation instead of copying, there also wouldn’t be any lawsuits.